German Application No. DE 298 04 012 U1 discloses a slitting shear with a two-armed cutting lever. This is pivotable about a cutting-lever axis, and an eccentric of a mechanical tool drive acts on one lever arm. On the other lever arm, the cutting lever is provided with blades for machining sheet metal. Two of these blades extend as longitudinal blades in the feed direction of the known slitting shear. A third blade extends as a transverse blade in the transverse direction of the longitudinal blades. Complementary counterblades on the tool housing are associated with the longitudinal blades and the transverse blade of the cutting lever. The cutting-lever axis is vertically adjustable. Depending upon the height of the cutting-lever axis, either only the longitudinal blades of the cutting lever pass the associated counterblades on the tool housing or, in addition to the longitudinal blades, the transverse blade of the cutting lever also passes the associated counterblade on the housing. When a metal sheet is cut, in the first-mentioned case a continuous metal strip is cut away as the slitting shear moves in the feed direction. If, owing to corresponding adjustment of the cutting-lever axis, the transverse blade of the cutting lever also passes the associated counterblade, the metal strip, which has previously been cut away, is clipped off.
To adjust the height of the cutting-lever axis and, therefore, to adjust the movement end positions of the bladed cutting-lever arm, the known slitting shear utilizes a threaded adjusting drive, which is manually actuated by the machine operator by means of a hand crank.